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Another approach: Everything to which existence may be
attributed is either one with its essence or distinct from it.
Thus any given man is distinct from essential man though
belonging to the order Man: a soul and a soul's essence are the
same- that is, in case of soul pure and unmingled- Man as type is
the same as man's essence; where the thing, man, and the essence
are different, the particular man may be considered as
accidental; but man, the essence, cannot be so; the type, Man,
has Real Being. Now if the essence of man is real, not chanced or
accidental, how can we think That to be accidental which
transcends the order man, author of the type, source of all
being, a principle more nearly simplex than man's being or being
of any kind? As we approach the simplex, accident recedes; what
is utterly simplex accident never touches at all.
Further we must remember what has been already said, that where
there is true being, where things have been brought to reality by
that Principle- and this is true of whatsoever has determined
condition within the order of sense- all that reality is brought
about in virtue of something emanating from the divine. By things
of determined condition I mean such as contain, inbound with
their essence, the reason of their being as they are, so that,
later, an observer can state the use for each of the constituent
parts- why the eye, why feet of such and such a kind to such and
such a being- and can recognise that the reason for the
production of each organ is inherent in that particular being and
that the parts exist for each other. Why feet of a certain
length? Because another member is as it is: because the face is
as it is, therefore the feet are what they are: in a word the
mutual determinant is mutual adaptation and the reason of each of
the several forms is that such is the plan of man.
Thus the essence and its reason are one and the same. The
constituent parts arise from the one source not because that
source has so conceived each separately but because it has
produced simultaneously the plan of the thing and its existence.
This therefore is author at once of the existence of things and
of their reasons, both produced at the one stroke. It is in
correspondence with the things of process but far more nearly
archetypal and authentic and in a closer relation with the
Better, their source, than they can be.
Of things carrying their causes within, none arises at hazard or
without purpose; this "So it happened to be" is applicable to
none. All that they have comes from The Good; the Supreme itself,
then, as author of reason, of causation, and of causing essence-
all certainly lying far outside of chance- must be the Principle
and as it were the examplar of things, thus independent of
hazard: it is, the First, the Authentic, immune from chance, from
blind effect and happening: God is cause of Himself; for Himself
and of Himself He is what He is, the first self, transcendently
The Self.
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